"Insects are a recurring theme in the game, because that's exactly what you are: a tiny, scared, insignificant insect, gazing up incomprehensibly at the towering food chain at the bottom of which you lie."

Limbo is a 2-D puzzle platforming horror game by Playdead, an independent game studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is their first game. It was originally released on Xbox Live Arcade, and was later ported with additional content to the PlayStation Network, Steam, Android and iOS.

The game's story is simple. You control a nameless young boy in Limbo, searching for his sister. There is no dialog or text of any kind to guide you. Just the boy and a really, really horrible environment. There are many deadly puzzles, challenges and traps that can get you killed, in many shockingly violent ways. A Gore Filter can make the deaths less grisly, but no less terrifying. When combined with the protagonist's limited moveset — he's entirely unarmed and can only jump, push/pull objects (like boxes and levers), climb ledges, and swing on ropes — Limbo's sense of helplessness and trepidation is intense. Something of a huge contrast and surprise between regional ratings, the ESRB somehow let the game pass with only a T for Teen rating, while PEGI gave it an 18, the strictest rating they have. If you see the more graphic deaths (though, to be fair, they're all completely silhouetted), you'll understand why some think the ESRB would have, or even should have given it an M for Mature rating instead.

Players draw many comparisons to Braid, another Xbox Live puzzle platformer that cost 1200 points at release, lasts about four to five hours on a first playthrough, has a unique art style, and says some interesting things about videogame storytelling.

Alas, Poor Villain: The spider ultimately meets its fate as a tool that the boy uses to advance. In the state of its demise, it was virtually helpless, as all of its legs were ripped off.

All Just a Dream: During the final puzzle, the boy crashes into a magical wall and lies down unconscious in a forest. When you get up and can move again, you can go left, only to find more forest where the hazardous industrial world once was. To your right, his sister awaits, playing in the grass, as if your whole adventure was just a dream... Or Was It a Dream?

All Webbed Up: Happens to the protagonist in the early parts of the game. However, he can struggle free and move around with enough effort.

Ambiguous Ending: You find your sister sitting peacefully in a clearing, apparently picking flowers. She sees you and stands up. Cut to black.

Asshole Victim: A tribe of evil children in the beginning will try to kill you repeatedly, and run up to their treehouses when they fail. Unfortunately, while they're safe from you, the giant spider has no such limitations.

Badass Adorable: You, being a young child that can climb ladders, jump from rope to rope, and deal with gigantic bugs even when you can't fight them directly.

Bear Trap: A couple of them early on. The first one you see are actually two next to each other; unless you spot the signs, you'll die horribly. After that, there's two more which are both used to your own advantage.

The beginning of the game has the boy waking up in the middle of a forest. After finishing the final puzzle, the boy is inexplicably launched into a forest where he wakes up in the same manner.

Body Horror: There are glowing worms (popularly referred to as 'brain slugs') that burrow into your head and force you to walk in one direction. Before that happens to you, you encounter other kids who are in the same situation; some are dead.

Brutal Bonus Level: The PSN, PC and Xbox One versions have one if you collect all the insect eggs. Its entrance is past where the "Alone in the Dark" egg is found, and when you beat it you come out at the elevator underneath which you find the "Under Ground" egg. It's extremely long, dark, and difficult, and there are several places where you'll have to navigate by sound alone.

An insect egg found later in the game requires you to navigate a dark cavern with your eyes as the only light source.

Bullet Time: Just as you solve the last puzzle. You get an excellent view of the protagonist flying slowly through an energy barrier and tumbling pitifully up a grassy hill. Then you get up and finally find your sister.

Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: This is subtle but, initially, you see a small white butterfly that goes towards your sister early in the game while the brain slug leads you away.

Controllable Helplessness: Early on, you run across some goop on the floor that slows you to a crawl, then finally immobilizes you. You realize that it's spider webbing just as the giant spider approaches and websyou up. In the demo, the spider just kills you at this point instead.

Crate Expectations: Puzzle elements, to the point where you'll know a puzzle is coming up whenever you see a crate or box.

Creepy Child: The other kids you meet early on, some of whom try to kill you.

Creepy Crows: At one point you find a lone crow cawing while perched on top of a hanging cage. The hanging cage next to the one with the crow has a human corpse inside of it.

Dark Is Not Evil: There are some very sinister-looking black worm/bird things that hang from the ceiling and have vicious mandibles. They're no threat to you, but they do a good job eating those brain slugs. There's also some sort of dog/gerbil/frog thing at one point, but all it does is run away when you go near it. You can even earn it as a pet for your Xbox avatar after beating the game.

Deliberately Monochrome: The only time you see some color is when Friend Notifications or Achievement/Trophy alerts pop up, and that's only on the console versions. On Steam, even the Achievement pop-up is black and white except if you're using a custom Steam skin that has color.

Determinator: The boy. Also, the giant spider. It really wants to eat you, even when it has only one leg left. The spider even disregards other potential meals when it chases you.

Downer Ending: The boy finds his sister. Roll credits. The title screen fades in to the same area, but the player might just see resemblances between the final image and the title screen. See Noodle Incident.

Down the Drain: At least one of the sections of the game where you have to outrun water.

Eldritch Location: The entirety of Limbo with all its darkness, peril, cruelty of the residents, and the strange gravity-manipulating devices near the end. You end up inside of it by mysteriously waking up in its forest. You leave it by having gravity pull you through a magical wall. Sideways.

Featureless Protagonist: He's a silhouette with eyes, and that's about it, however, if you look closely at the outline, you can tell he's wearing a sweater, shorts, and a pair of sneakers. Also, in some parts of the game, you can see flies buzzing around him...

Gory Discretion Shot: There's a gore filter in the options that has the game cut to black right before you die. Doesn't remove the sounds, though.

Gravity Screw: The final section of the game has devices that turn the gravity upside down. First only items, then you too. Though a few sections earlier, there is a rotational variation of it. The very last puzzle turns the gravity sideways.

Hailfire Peaks: The very last part of the game is a mash-up of many previous areas; forest, industrial, part of the hotel sign, and so on.

Heartbeat Soundtrack: Not a human heartbeat, but the Giant Spider has a distinctive, low-pitched buzzing noise that plays in the background whenever it's around. It finally stops when you shove the thing into a spike pit.

Hell Hotel: More accurately, limbo hotel. A section of the game takes place there.

Hope Spot: A few. Most notably the fake ending and the one in the secret level, where after a long and difficult trek dodging sawblades and other industrial dangers in complete darkness, you come into a serene, quiet, and well-lit area. Then you're plunged back into the darkness and the machine guns open fire.

Interface Screw: When a brain slug drops on you, you are forced to run in the opposite direction from where you were heading and you can't stop. If you run into a patch of sunlight, you switch direction.

Mind Screw: This trope eventually shows up when the fake ending occurs. The sister is up ahead, but a brain slug turns you around. A light mysteriously appears in the previous area, spinning you forward again; but by the time you get back to where she should be, you're in more of the factory instead.

Minimalism: Less is definitely more in this case. No dialogue, no exposition, no fancy controls, no color... and yet, this game wouldn't have nearly the atmospheric impact if it did have any of these.

Nightmarish Factory: The boy traverses an extensive one near the end of the game. Whatever it produced, it involved a lot of flattening and sawing.

Noodle Incident: The kid and his sister are dead. We find that out in the ending and title screen. But how did they both die, and why is the rope ladder on their treehouse broken? Maybe it's best we don't know.

Nothing Is Scarier: A lot of things in the game are scary specifically because you can't see them clearly: strange bundles lying in the grass or hanging from ropes that might be dead bodies, unearthly creatures that run away or attack you before you can get a good look at them, deserted industrial landscapes and creaking machinery whose function remains a mystery, and so on.

One-Word Title: The title is Limbo, perhaps for the possibility that the protagonist and his sister are dead.

Le Parkour: While the boy doesn't do any of the fancy wall-runs or fence-hops, he does a fair amount of leaping over pits and ledge-climbing.

Pressure Plate: Some of the buttons. A rather nasty trap early on has one apparent pressure plate actually being the safe zone for a huge smasher; hopping onto the depressions to its sides is what kills you. This would be less annoying if it wasn't right next to another identical trap where the thing sticking up is the kill-button... and you have to pass through both of them twice.

Puppeteer Parasite: Glowing slugs may plop onto your head. They force you to walk or run forward—you can only control your speed, and whether or not you jump. They are sensitive to bright lights, however, and if you run into one, it will sizzle and force you to run in the opposite direction. There are some ceiling-dwelling critters that can reach out and pluck the brain slug from your head, but getting to them is the real challenge. When we first see the slugs in action, it's on another human who's being forced into a pool of water, to drown...

Rasputinian Death: The aforementioned spider. First you chop three of its legs off with a bear trap, then you lure it into the path of an oncoming boulder, which in turn knocks it over a cliff, then you pull out its last leg, and finally you roll its body into a spike pit.

Scarecrow Solution: Not long into the forest level, you see some more of those dreaded spider legs poking out from a nearby tree—but they're a fake. The hostile humans in the area set them up to scare you away.

Smash to Black: An optional example available, which censors the gory deaths of the boy, but leaves the sound in.

Soundtrack Dissonance: One scene has hopeful-sounding ambient music playing while machine guns fire at you.

Spikes of Doom: In some sections. And you're not the only one vulnerable to them.

Stupidity Is the Only Option: The parasitic worms are easy to see, considering they're white and everything else is dark. Doesn't matter; you still have to pass under them and get infected. There's no avoiding them.

Super Drowning Skills: In any body of water that comes up above your head, you drown almost immediately and sink like a stone. There's an audible cue for near-drowning; the soundtrack will begin to fade and it's only after that point that you'll die. You can still press the movement keys which causes the boy to twitch as he dies...

Super-Persistent Predator: The spider. It never gives up hunting the kid for as long as it lives, despite having only one leg in its final appearance.

Trial-and-Error Gameplay: In fact, the developer described it as "trial-and-death" gameplay. Chances are, on your first playthrough, that you'll die quite often while trying to figure out a couple puzzles. The best example of this is the pair of mechanical crushers early on. To avoid causing the first one to fall on you, you must step on the elevated square underneath it. For the second one, you have to avoid an identical square. There's no indication of the solution, other than dying and trying again. It is so easy to die in this game that one of the Xbox Achievements for the game is a "no-death run" in which you're allowed to die up to five times and still get the Achievement.

Video Game Caring Potential: The protagonist is a child. A cute kid who is getting slaughtered by everything. Give it a few deaths and you'll be dodging the puzzles for his sake, not your own.

Video Game Cruelty Potential: After beating the game the player has the option of replaying any of the chapters. Kind gamers can enjoy their favorite puzzles over and over while helping the boy reach his goal. Sadistic players can see just how many different ways it's possible to kill the poor kid...

Weakened by the Light: The brain slugs have this as their only weakness. If you walk into the light while under the influence of one of these, you'll be forced to walk away in the other direction.

Who Forgot the Lights?: Some parts of the game are not recommended to be played during daytime. It's that dark.

When It Rains, It Pours: When you turn on a weather machine, it starts raining so hard that the next portion of gameplay is devoted to avoiding drowning in the ever-rising water.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: A fair bit of the way into the industrial portion of the game, you will emerge in a small forested area, with the treehouse and the girl you were looking for—then a Brain Slug plops onto your head and forces you to run the other way. When you get back, there is no forest or treehouse...

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